Judge Mark C. Kim, Case 22LBCV00852 2023-04-06 Tentative Ruling

Judge: Mark C. Kim, Case: 22LBCV00852, Date: 2023-04-06 Tentative Ruling

Case Number: 22LBCV00852 Hearing Date: April 6, 2023 Dept: S27

1. Background Facts

Marlene Canas (“Plaintiff”) filed her Complaint on November 23, 2022 alleging four causes of action: (1) Quiet Title, (2) Cancellation of Instrument; (3) Declaratory Relief, and (4) Injunctive Relief. The Complaint is filed against Defendants John Canas (Plaintiff’s ex-husband, erroneously sued as “John Canas”, but whose last name is Cañas, hereinafter, “Defendant John”) Bank of America, Recon Trust Company, and Evelyn Marie Canas. The subject of Plaintiff’s Complaint is certain real property located at 1072 West Torrance Boulevard, Torrance, California 90502-1655 (“the Property”). (Complaint, ¶ 9). Plaintiff alleges that the Property was acquired from her grandmother pursuant to a Grant Deed dated December 19, 2002 and recorded March 7, 2003. (Complaint, ¶ 10 & ¶ 12). Plaintiff then alleges that unknown to her, the vesting grant deed read “John Canas and Marlene Canas, Husband and Wife, as Joint Tenants” when in fact Plaintiff was the only party who should have taken title to the Property. (Complaint, ¶ 10). Plaintiff additionally alleges that the Grant Deed dated March 15, 2005, that purported to transfer Plaintiff’s title in the Property to Defendant John had her signature forged and is therefore invalid. (Complaint, ¶ 16).

Subsequently, Plaintiff alleges that Defendant John then took out loans and transferred title to the Property to himself as an unmarried man by a Grant Deed recorded on November 9, 2007. (Complaint, ¶ 17). A final Grant Deed that was recorded on September 8, 2015 was then used to transfer the title of the Property to himself as a married man by way of Interspousal Transfer.

Defendant John filed the instant Motion to Compel Further Responses by Plaintiff to Requests for Production (Sets 1 & 2) and for Monetary Sanctions in the amount of $2,588.45 (“the Motion”) on March 9, 2023. Plaintiff filed opposition papers on March 23, 2023. Defendant John filed reply papers on March 29, 2023, requesting a $2,400.00 increase in the amount of monetary sanctions.

2. Evidentiary Objections

Within their reply papers, Defendant John submits a “Request to Strike Portions of Marlene Cana’s Separate Statement in Opposition to John Cana’s Motion to Compel Further” (hereinafter, “RTS”). As this is not a formal motion to strike, the Court will resolve the request as if they were evidentiary objections. The Court will overrule evidentiary objections 1-11 within the RTS.

3. Motion to Compel

Legal Standard -

The propounding party may bring motions to compel further responses to interrogatories or requests for production if it believes (1) the responses received are evasive, or (2) incomplete, or (3) if the objections raised are meritless or too general. (Code Civ. Proc. §§ 2030.300(a), 2031.310(a).) A respondent has the burden to justify objections in response to a motion filed to compel further responses. (Fairmont Ins. Co. v. Superior Court (2000) 22 Cal.4th 245, 255.)

If a party to whom interrogatories are directed fails to serve a timely response, the propounding party may move for an order compelling responses and for a monetary sanction. (Code Civ. Proc., § 2030.290, subds. (b), (c).) Failure to timely respond waives all objections, including privilege and work product, unless “[t]he party has subsequently served a response that is in substantial compliance” and “[t]he party’s failure to serve a timely response was the result of mistake, inadvertence, or excusable neglect.” (Code Civ. Proc., § 2030.290, subd. (a).) The statute contains no time limit for a motion to compel where no responses have been served. All that need be shown in the moving papers is that a set of interrogatories was properly served on the opposing party, that the time to respond has expired, and that no response of any kind has been served. (Leach v. Superior Court (1980) 111 Cal.App.3d 902, 905-906.)

If a motion to compel responses to interrogatories is filed, the Court may impose a monetary sanction against the losing party “unless it finds that the one subject to the sanction acted with substantial justification or that other circumstances make the imposition of the sanction unjust.” (Code Civ. Proc., §§ 2030.290, subd. (c).) Further, “[t]he court may award sanctions under the Discovery Act in favor of a party who files a motion to compel discovery, even though no opposition to the motion was filed, or opposition to the motion was withdrawn, or the requested discovery was provided to the moving party after the motion was filed.” (Cal. Rules of Court, rule 3.1348(a).)

Analysis -

a. Objections

“A respondent has the burden to justify objections in response to a motion filed to compel further responses.” (Fairmount Ins. Co., supra at 255). Here, it is difficult to discern the justification for Plaintiff’s objections to a number of the requests. For example, Request for Production No. 10 in the Response to Request for Production, Set No. 1 (Motion, Exh. C, p. 7:14-20), Plaintiff objects, arguing that the request is improperly compound. Presumably, Plaintiff is referring to CCP § 2030.060(f) which states “No specially prepared interrogatory shall contain subparts, or a compound, conjunctive, or disjunctive question.” However, there is no similar statutory limitation regarding requests for production of documents which is governed by CCP § 2031.030. Therefore, Request for Production No. 10 was proper.

Another issue is that other initial objections appear to be vague or too general (i.e., boilerplate objections) therefore subjecting them to CCP § 2030.300(a)(3). For example, the responses to request numbers 1, 2, 7, 8, 10, and 13 all say, “See documents produced by plaintiff in support of plaintiff’s application for a TRO and preliminary injunction.” (Motion, Exh. C). However, a review of the documents produced in support of Plaintiff’s application for a TRO and preliminary injunction shows they have little to do with information the requests for production are asking for.

Adding to the confusion, is that many of these responses were prefaced with an objection before leading the reader to the documentation used to support the Plaintiff’s application for a TRO and preliminary injunction. This makes it difficult for the Court to determine whether these requests are definitively objected to, or whether the documents can and will be produced and the objection is therefore abandoned.

b. Supplemental Responses

In response to meet and confer communications, Plaintiff proffered supplemental responses on February 13, 2023 to Defendant John’s Request for Production. However, Defendant John noticed that certain pages were missing, moreover, the supplemental responses were not fully responsive. (Motion, Exhibit L-2). Notably, Plaintiff’s opposition papers are silent as to missing documents.

Plaintiff argues through “Plaintiff Marlene Canas’ Opposition to Defendant John Canas’ Motion to Compel” (hereinafter, “Opposition Papers”), that Defendant John’s document requests suffer from the same defects as the broad requests made in Calcor Space Facility, Inc., v. Superior Court (1997) 53 Cal.App.4^th 216. In that case, the plaintiff served a motion to compel on a nonparty requesting broad categories of documents and other materials without identifying specific documents. Additionally, the plaintiff included almost three pages of definitions and another three pages of instructions. (Calcor Space Facility, supra at 216). Plaintiff Canas analogizes the instant case to Calcor arguing that Defendant John’s request asking for documents “tending to prove or disprove” and “documents mentioning, concerning, referring to, or evidencing” are broad. (Opposition Papers, 4:15-19). This Court disagrees.

In several of the requests, specific documents are mentioned by name or topic, including but not limited to:

(1) documents related to Plaintiff taking title to the Property (Request for Production No. 2),

(2) cancelled checks, check registers, and bank statements (Request for Production No. 5 and 8),

(3) documents related to the purchase money loan Plaintiff mentions in paragraph 15 of her Complaint (Request for Production No. 6),

(4) documents related to mortgage payments (Request for Production No. 7), and,

(5) documents related to communications from BNC Mortgage, Inc. in 2005 (Request for Production No. 12). (Motion, Exh. C).

The Court can further distinguish Calcor from the instant case in that the latter has sections for both “definitions” and the “items to be produced” within the Motion together that take up only two pages. This is not to say that that parties should not work to narrow the production to what they deem necessary, quite the contrary, this Court encourages such behavior. Especially if one party may have felt the need to turn in over 500 pages of documents, when the actual need may have been for much fewer. (Opposition Papers, 4:21). However, Defendant John’s request was sufficiently clear for Plaintiff to respond adequately. Even after supplemental responses were turned in, the supplemental responses did not comply with CCP § 2031.220 nor 2031.230.

Because of the aforementioned deficiencies within Plaintiff’s responses to Defendant’s requests, the Motion will be granted. Now the Court will turn to monetary sanctions.

c. Monetary Sanctions

Defendant requests monetary sanctions of at least $2,588.45. Defendant’s counsel states that their hourly rate is $400 per hour. (Motion, ¶ 25). They have broken down their request for monetary sanctions as follows:

6.1 hours preparing the instant Motion (equating to $2,440.00)
4.3 hours meeting and conferring (equating to $1,720.00)
The cost to file and serve the instant Motion was $61.65 in filing fees charged by this Court, and $42.50 for copying costs, which equates to $104.15.

Although the total sum adds up to $4,264.15, the Court will grant the monetary sanctions in the requested amount of $2,588.45. In the “Supplemental Declaration of Patricia J. Grace” (hereinafter, “Grace Dec.”) within their reply papers, Defendant requests a $2,400.00 increase per the following breakdown further breaks down the following:

1.5 hours preparing the Reply Brief (equating to $600.00)
2.5 hours preparing the Separate Statement (equating to $1,000)
2.0 hours preparing the Request to Strike (equating to $800.00)

However, in its discretion, the Court will only increase the sanctions by $1,600.00. Therefore, the overall total of sanctions is the requested $2,588.45 plus the $1,600.00 increase, equating to $4,188.45, ordered jointly and severally against Plaintiff and Plaintiff’s attorneys of record.

4. Conclusion

Accordingly, Defendant John Canas’ Motion to Compel Further Responses by Plaintiff to Requests for Production (Sets 1 & 2) is GRANTED and the monetary sanctions in the amount of $4,188.45 is GRANTED.

Defendant is ordered to give notice.

Parties who intend to submit on this tentative must send an email to the court at gdcdepts27@lacourt.org indicating intention to submit on the tentative as directed by the instructions provided on the court website at www.lacourt.org. If the department does not receive an email indicating the parties are submitting on the tentative and there are no appearances at the hearing, the motion may be placed off calendar. If a party submits on the tentative, the party’s email must include the case number and must identify the party submitting on the tentative.